


Until You Came Along (And You Took Aim)

by gilligankane



Category: Glee
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-28
Updated: 2011-05-28
Packaged: 2017-11-17 07:35:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/549149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gilligankane/pseuds/gilligankane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Quinn walks into McKinley High School for the first time, Santana Lopez is the first person she meets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Until You Came Along (And You Took Aim)

When Quinn walks into McKinley High School for the first time, Santana Lopez is the first person she meets.  
  
It’s not on purpose – Quinn is trying to find the nearest bathroom, to rid herself of the butterflies fluttering wildly inside her stomach and pushing her hair out of her eyes at the same time when some heavy, solid thing hits her from the right, slamming her against the nearest set of lockers.  
  
(Two years later, when Santana throws her hard against those same lockers, she can’t stop herself from remembering how it felt the first time: the unforgiving metal cutting into her shoulders and the vents on the lockers skinning the backs of her arms.  
  
She can’t stop herself from remembering how she had the urge to do the same, to slam Santana’s back against the lockers so she could feel it for herself, but self-restraint takes over just before she fists the girl’s oversized sweater and shoves.  
  
Two years later, that self-restraint is buried under self-hatred and Quinn doesn’t remember that it’s bad etiquette to push back.)  
  
“Watch it,” the person hisses, still pinning her against the locker. “God, eyes up, loser.”  
  
Quinn’s fingers splay open against the person’s shoulders. “Get off me.”  
  
The person steps back, batting her hand down across Quinn’s forearms, breaking the barely-there hold and she finally gets a good look at the person, the girl, who nearly bowled her over for the whole hallway to see.  
  
Converse, jeans ripped at the knees in that  _I-didn’t-buy-these-from-a-store_  kind of way, an oversized Miami Dolphins sweatshirt hanging off one shoulder and black-rimmed glasses hidden behind a sweep of dark hair. She looks rough, around the edges of her eyes where they’re narrowed, as if she’s daring Quinn to push her back.  
  
(That look will propel Santana through high school. Quinn can see it now. Santana already  _knows_  it. And Quinn will shamelessly copy it until her life spirals out of her control and she only narrows her eyes as something to do to prevent herself from crying.)  
  
“What?” the girl asks, pushing her glasses up on the bridge of her nose. “What are you lookin’ at?”  
  
Quinn swallows the urge to shrink away from the girl’s glare. She’s reinvented herself but confrontation is something she hasn’t mastered yet – she’s been trained to say  _please_  and  _thank you_  and  _I’m sorry_  when she runs into people, even when people run into her. Every one of her learned instincts is telling her to take a step back, avert her eyes and let the girl go on her way. The last thing Quinn wants is to draw the wrong kind of attention to herself this early on.  
  
(When she’s pregnant and walking through the halls virtually invisible, she’ll do anything to get any attention – good, bad, ugly. It doesn’t matter, as long as it gets someone to look at her, see her and know she’s there.  
  
So she makes up the Glist, as flawed as it is. And she puts herself at the top as the most promiscuous though she knows that on the scale of Virgin to Madonna she falls lower than even Rachel Berry – she heard about the Sandra Dee-esque catwoman suit and if that doesn’t scream loose and immoral then she doesn’t know what does.   
  
That crashes and burns around her too, just like everything else.)  
  
“Nothing,” Quinn finally says. Her manners are a reflex. “I’m Quinn Fabray.”  
  
“Congrau-fucking-lations,” the girl hisses.  
  
Quinn holds her ground, her cheeks burning as a teacher with curly hair frowns gently at them as he passes. “I think we have English together. Ms. Knight, sixth period.”  
  
The girl’s eyes flash with a little recognition. “You’re the goody-two-shoes who sits in the front and takes notes, right?”  
  
“You’re the girl who sits in the back and tears the pages out of a perfectly good copy of  _To Kill A Mockingbird_ ,” Quinn fires back quietly.  
  
When the girl laughs, Quinn isn’t ready for it. It’s loud and clear and her neck twists back the way someone really laughing does. It’s embarrassing that it takes Quinn by surprise – she’s used to quiet tittering behind hands and scolding glances when anything louder than breathing is heard.  
  
(Santana stops laughing like that, though, after a while as Quinn’s right hand. She starts doing some bitter-sounding cross between a growl, a snort and a snicker.  
  
Maybe she really laughs when she’s with other people, Brittany most likely. Maybe Santana really laughs alone in her own room. But in front of Quinn, she only smirks and scoffs and Quinn realizes that of all the things she misses about the Santana she first met, that laugh is high on the list.  
  
Sometimes, Quinn feels like she’s the reason she never hears that laugh after the first two months of freshman year.   
  
It’s one of the things she never forgives herself for.)  
  
“Santana Lopez,” the girl says. She doesn’t hold her hand out to shake Quinn’s. She doesn’t say that she’s introducing herself. Santana Lopez just nods and cocks her head towards the other end of the hall and starts walking, not waiting for Quinn to catch up. “You’re new, huh?” she asks, pushing up her glasses again. “Like, you didn’t go to our middle school.”  
  
Quinn panics.  _Maybe Santana knows something. Maybe she knows who I was or why I’m here._  
  
But Santana is still talking. “So am I. Sort of. I’m reinventing myself, you know? I’m still going to be badass. But I want to be badass and one of them,” she say as they pass a few girls – tall and willowy and long legs under red, pleated skirts.  
  
“They’re pretty,” Quinn says wistfully as one of them, a blonde, rolls her eyes and pushes a boy in a letterman jacket away gently.  
  
“I’m going to be one of them,” Santana insists. “Tryouts are next week.” She leans into Quinn’s shoulder, her aqua green sweatshirt clashing with Quinn’s light purple dress. “Guess what? I’ve got a list of girls who are going to try out.”  
  
Quinn smiles slowly, unsure of what that means.  
  
“We can join forces. Scare ‘em away. I mean, I’m talented, you know? My cousin has been training me since, like, forever. But too many girls and the coach, who is kind of evil, might just get rid of all of us without checking us out.” Santana’s chest puffs out just a little. “And, I have a secret weapon.”  
  
“Besides the list.”  
  
Santana nods. “Besides the list, yeah.”  
  
Quinn waits as they round a corner, barely missing a tall, lanky, awkward boy with clumsy feet and a lopsided smile. He looks over his shoulder at him as they pass him, a boy next to him with a Mohawk smacking him across the back of the head to get his attention.  
  
(Finn tells her one day, as they’re laying on the couch, his large hand against her larger stomach, that he fell in love with her in that moment. That Puck had to keep telling him to stop staring because she would think Finn was a creep.  
  
Quinn tells herself that she’ll tell Finn about the baby’s father later and just enjoys the heavy, warm kiss Finn presses to the side of her face.)  
  
“Do you want to know what it is,” Santana asks after a minute, irritation in her voice.  
  
Quinn snaps back to attention, pulling her eyes away from the two boys. “Of course. What is it?”  
  
Santana’s voice drops to a whisper and Quinn’s heart flutters with excitement. Secrets. She can’t remember the last time someone besides her father or mother told her a secret. Her sister hardly talks to her anymore and friends have always been hard to come by. But this, Santana leaning even closer, her warm, coffee-smelling breath hitting Quinn’s neck, sends Quinn’s pulse racing and her heart hammering against her rib cage.  
  
She feels like she can hardly breathe, the excitement is so overwhelming. Someone is telling her a secret.  
  
And in this moment, she wants to be best friends with Santana Lopez for the rest of her life.  
  
(After a while, though, Quinn notices Santana stops telling her secrets when she realizes that Quinn can use them against her.  
  
And in that moment, Quinn hates the ‘friend’ she’s become.)  
  
“My neighbor is a dancing queen,” Santana whispers conspiratorially.   
  
Quinn frowns. “Like the ABBA song?”  
  
Santana grins. “Exactly like that. She’s been teaching me this routine that’s going to  _kill_  at tryouts. If you want,” she says hesitantly, uncertainty in her eyes, “then she could teach you too. We could kick ass.”  
  
Her heart stops in her chest.   
  
Secrets. Friends. Alliances to make cheerleading tryouts. A cute boy smiled at her.  
  
It’s all too much on her first day of high school. Her whole body is humming with adrenaline rushing through her veins. Her fingers are tingling and her knuckles are white where she’s gripping her notebook against her chest. She feels lightheaded and weightless.  
  
If this is what death feels like, she doesn’t mind going this way.  
  
“Okay,” she manages to squeak out. “We could practice at my house.”  
  
Her mother will be so happy about  _friends_ , she might just buy Quinn that Chastity Ball gown she’s had her eyes on, even if the ball isn’t until next year.  
  
Santana nods and grins at her, grabbing her by the elbow and stopping in front of what Quinn can only assume is her locker. “I knew this year would be good,” she coos, pressing her flat palm against her glasses to hold them steady as she leans down.  
  
Quinn almost wants to correct her. This year is going to be  _great_.   
  
(Quinn goes through high school differently than she imagined she would: clawing her way to the top, falling shamefully to the bottom again, staring over, coming up short, lagging behind.  
  
She makes mistakes and has accidents: Finn, Puck and the baby, Finn again, quitting Cheerios, trying to sabotage the one place where people accept her.  
  
When she looks back, she regrets almost all of them.  
  
But when Santana slips up behind her at graduation, knocking her cap to the ground and bumping their shoulders together, her coffee-smelling breath beating against Quinn’s neck as she whispers  _we made it_ , Quinn finds there’s one thing she doesn’t regret.)


End file.
